TagWorld Launches Music. The War Begins.

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Over the weekend TagWorld, a young, self-funded startup in Santa Monica that’s all of a month old, launched a music product that is turning heads.

TagWorld is targeting the MySpace crowd – generally people under 25, who all want a blogging/home page presence on the web. Sites like MySpace, FaceBook and Xanga are generating a truly massive number of page views – MySpace and FaceBook each rival Google in page views (although they don’t approach the reach). The reason? These users spend most of their day on these sites, updating their sites and clicking on friends.

The new music functionality is a full generation ahead of MySpace and others. Bands can upload a GB of music and have a number of DRM options to control distrubution. Users can mix this music into their own media player and can upload their own music (and other files, like photos and movies) as well. They can create customized music playlists, store the music on TagWorld and have access to it anywhere they can get online. Users can also set up playlists that others can listen to when they visit the user’s website. All of this requires nothing but the ability to click on the music and drag the music player modue onto their site. No HTML or other technical skills are needed.

Second, TagWorld has 160,000+ users after just a month of being live. The “in” crowd is starting to notice.

Third, I think the teenager/student social network doesn’t have the same lock-in that, say, ebay has. TagWorld’s target users are fickle and don’t want to be considered mainstream. They’ll try new things and if the functionality is there, they’ll stay. And this target market is constantly renewing itself as children become teenagers (new customers) and young adults move on to more professional tools (customers leave).

So, in a nutshell, I’m bullish on TagWorld. And some of these features quite frankly appeal to a much larger audience than teenagers and young adults. The market for an online music locker with a portable player is wide open. TagWorld can take this market.

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CrunchBase

OverviewMySpace is one of the world's largest social networks, with about 125 million users. Originally inspired by Friendster, MySpace quickly grew to become the world's largest social network, before being overtaken by Facebook. User pages are highly customizable and support integration with widgets such as Slide or YouTube. MySpace provides users with a way to connect around content and culture. …